4 trends from LeWeb that could make waves in the Arab world in 2015

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The end of the year is always an interesting time. Some like to
go back on what happened in the year gone by, while others try to
predict what will be happening in the year to come. LeWeb, the
biggest tech event in France, is one of the latter. This year, they
focused on what topics in tech would be trending in 2015. We picked
four that could make waves in the Arab world in 2015.

The crowd economy gears up

Forget about the sharing economy, the time has come
for the crowd economy. Companies, in many
different sectors, will increasingly count on the crowd to build
their products and services in the year to come.

While Uber, Airbnb, and LendingClub and are on their away to
become this decade’s success stories, the crowd economy is
expanding to new markets. On the LeWeb stage, Jeremiah Owyang
unveiled a diagram to highlight new sectors recently impacted by
the crowd economy: education (he cited MOOCs as an example), logistics (with services
like Dubai-based Friendshippr),
telecos (with Fon), health, (with
Cohealo), and others.

It was overall an interesting talk that shows that
the many Arab
entrepreneurs who’ve dipped their toes into the crowd
economy are onto something. Learn more in this video:

Wearables are for professionals

We’ve heard a lot about watches and fitness trackers as consumer
gadgets, but this is actually only the tip of the iceberg.
According to the speakers at LeWeb, wearables have a big role to
play in the lives of professionals. A recent
Forrester study found that 52% of IT and business managers
identified strategy and support of wearable devices as a
critical, high, or moderate priority.

Health trackers can enable companies to check if workers in
extreme conditions are in good shape or if they need an emergency
help, and can help, for example, airport workers checking the
conditions of planes on the tarmac ask for remote team’s expertise.
This trend will no doubt inspire the Arab entrepreneurs who have
been making strides in the wearable
industry.

Check out this video for more possible uses:

A healthy mind in a healthy body

Will this year be the year entrepreneurs finally startup paying
attention to their mental health? Entrepreneurs who are into
meditation and yoga took the main stage twice, and led sessions in
a dedicated meditation room throughout the event.

They wanted to prove to entrepreneurs the benefits of
meditation and yoga: less stress, better decisions, clearer
vision of what their company needs, better hold on their ideas.
Seeing how many people took part in the sessions, the message seems
to be striking a chord.

Neuroscientists also took the stage to explain how mediation can
help people get rid of their addictions, whether from cigarettes,
Facebook, or... selfies. Thanks to mobile apps and crowd power,
mediation programs are at everyone’s reach (watch
this video to
learn more).

Give a try to yoga and meditation with this video, and see if
this helps you forget Cairo’s mad traffic, or finally get control
over (admit it) your addiction to selfies:

Digital health, the new Eldorado

Health is a huge market – in the US, health-related expenses
should reach $4 trillion dollars in 2015 – but it still hasn’t gone
through a digital revolution.

As Daniel Kraft noted at LeWeb, bringing digital in the health
sector could help power a shift from reactive care to prevention.
Wearables, such as FitBit, connected contact lenses, or connected
onesies for infants, could enable medical professionals and
laypeople alike to gather data that will expedite treatment.
Digital also enables the development of insideables, connected
objects that can work within the human body, like this pills that
can replace a colposcopy.

Digital can also help predict disease by making genome
sequencing within everybody’s reach, and improving the quality and
affordability of check-ups, with tools like the digital stethoscope
that works with an app, or digital eye check-up that only requires
an add-on to a smartphone.